“…In effect, we often experience our lives as stateless peoples, who exist in liminal, unnamed social positions. We know of our condition, as do the professionals and scholars that came before us, but it remains an open secret. It would be uncouth to speak of the trauma of situational privilege, that thing we kill ourselves for daily, in a communal ritual of cultural euthanasia and godless circumcisions. Who are we to whine about the stresses of managing multiple consciousnesses that, at times, overwhelm our neuronal pathways to the point of exhaustion: where we forget what role we should be performing in the moment, which inflection to use, when our skin tone is proper for the zone? It seems silly to speak of school as a spiritual and ideological war-zone when thousands die across the nation and from police interactions, gun violence and other symptoms of the war on black and blackened and poor folks. Who are we to speak of pain when poor people are made and invisible and swept under the feel good blanket of “middle class” politics? We got out. We are moving on up. We don’t quite know where to, but we are told it is a good place. It is distant. Far from our families. We mustn’t worry about them, this distance is good for our career, we are told. We must be separated to learn to lead, as if the education system has ever taught any black person what they didn’t already know about surviving the dual plague of white supremacy and capitalism. In all truth, we are being taught and trained to be different; to be professionals. To profess, to speak of and bear witness to a life–an ideology–that is not only different than that from whence we came, but also superior. We are slowly transformed into ambassadors of American elitism and our black flesh is transformed, as we accumulate wealth and situational prestige, into proof and authentication of the silently violent, sociopolitical and legal power structure that we live in. Our successes become proof that most, if not all, social ills are not baked into the system or nation but instead a sad indication of a character flaw in the bones of several million people. They could’ve done better–the logic goes and our bodies prove–if they simply worked harder, worked smarter and gave a damn. Professionalism, with its bowties and pantsuits and relaxers and fresh lineups and learned inflections and branded predilections is a costly performance, a ritual that provides partial absolvement to some and sure death to others; the mothers, the fathers, and the kinfolk of the newly learned…”